Down Sunnyside Lane
by JX Valentine
Summary: You travel to the ends of the earth for her, yet no matter where you look, you just can't find her. (One-shot for Pokémon Bank.)


You will always remember the first time you meet her. Your species has good memory like that, but it works best with the people you're most attached to. And she, the first thing you see when you burst from darkness into light, is what you automatically assume is your mother, so of course you form an attachment to her.

She holds you up to the light and lets you feel the warmth. Her blue eyes sparkle when she sees you, and the smile on her round face is wide and white. Blue of her eyes. White of her smile. Brown of her short hair. Red and black of her clothes. Pink of her face. Although the world around her develops like a photograph for you, the only colors that are vivid are hers. She emanates warmth and excitement and illumination like a neon sign—as you describe it in hindsight—and it's beautiful. She's beautiful, and you love her from the first second you see her.

"Hi, Bill!" she practically sings, and you realize one of those words is your name. Your name! "Hi! I've waited so long for you!"

She draws you into an embrace—gentle but tight—and you feel safe and loved.

Over the next several months, you evolve twice for her. You learn new moves for her. You help her earn five badges and four ribbons. You stop a legendary for her. You defeat the Elite Four and champion for her, and you watch her be crowned strongest trainer in Hoenn. All the while, you delight in her bright, white smile.

And then things get quiet.

* * *

She trades you for a weedle. You're angry at first, so you don't listen when the new girl says she really is her: your trainer, your Lupe. You refuse to read the girl's aura to find out. From what you can see with your eyes, her colors are all wrong anyway. The new girl's eyes are brown, not blue, and her hair is too light, her skin too pale, her clothes too feminine. Lupe would never wear skirts. Even her grip, when she hugs you, is far too loose to be Lupe's.

When she realizes you keep your distance around her, your new trainer takes you to your namesake for advice. She says it's your namesake, and you know it is because Lupe told you on one of the many nights you spent with her, between rounds against the Elite Four. So you look forward to meeting him, just because you want to meet the man your Lupe admired so much.

You hate him the moment you see him.

And he knows as he stands in the doorway with his brown eyes—dull compared to Lupe's—studying you up and down. Then, he moves aside and lets the two of you into a messy laboratory. He smells wrong when you pass him, like a human and a clefairy all at once. The laboratory doesn't smell that much better. All electricity and metal and old coffee. He pours your trainer and himself a cup from a nearby pot, apologizes for its age, and takes a sip. Thankfully, this Lupe sets it aside when he isn't looking.

"So what's wrong with him?" she says.

"You didn't think he'd love you instantly, did you?" Bill responds. "To him, you're not his trainer. You're going to have to work for his trust again. And believe me, gardevoir don't make it easy. Once they form bonds with a human, it's for life. If yours is still attached to its former trainer, then you're going to have to put in a lot of effort just to get your foot in the door."

"How do I do that?" your trainer asks.

Bill looks at the ceiling. "These things take time. But if you want to do it quickly ..."

He pauses to open a desk drawer with one hand. Rifling around in its contents, he fishes out a booklet and tosses it to your trainer. She catches it effortlessly and looks down to examine its cover, giving you plenty of opportunity to peer at it yourself.

The book smells like mildew and eevee, and you don't like it.

"This helped me get an espeon and an umbreon," he explains, though neither of you asked. "Follow that, and he'll love you again in no time."

Sometime later, she gives you a bell to wear around your neck. She takes you to a woman in Pallet Town for a massage every day, and you and this Lupe explore every last corner of the Sevii Islands. Between the smells of bittersweet Pallet tea and sour oranges and salty sand, you eventually become friends with her. But even then, one thing is still for certain.

She is still not your Lupe.

* * *

You don't remember the next transfer. You only remember the feeling of warm sun and soft grass. Were you released? Did this Lupe give up? You sit and crane your neck, frantically searching for her familiar scent. It takes a while, but you eventually smell a human. It's just not Lupe.

"Ah! There you are."

And then, you feel something collide with the back of your head. Then nothing at all.

Nothing, anyway, until you're let out and you meet the next Lupe. And she is not at all like the first or the second. She's all blue and pink this time: blue hair, blue eyes, blue vest, pink skin, pink skirt, pink scarf. Not only that, but like this region, she's also cold. Very cold. She doesn't say much as she takes you from city to city to catch pokémon that she sends to the storage system or to evolve pokémon purely for pokédex entries. Everything about her is methodical, calculated, planned.

Because she doesn't spend much time connecting with you, you find yourself with more and more time to reflect on your situation, on the pokémon she catches, and on the region. You realize that while you didn't care for Kanto's terrain, you at least enjoyed the warmth of the Sevii Islands, the warm hands of the girl in Pallet, and the warm greetings the Kantonians would give each other. But you don't like Sinnoh at all. The weather is too cold—snowy even, in this Lupe's favorite places. The people are too distant, too obsessed with the past, and Lupe speaks to so few of them. Even the woman who gives you massages, when Lupe decides to bring you to that desolate, northern point, is too fancy, too high-class to be considered warm. And you don't like the slickness of the oil she uses, either, nor do you like how cold her hands always seem to be. Her massages feel wrong against your skin, as if love and care isn't even a factor in them.

Luckily, you don't see her that often. This Lupe has more important things to do. At first, it was simply collecting pokémon, but eventually, Lupe begins to spend more and more time underground, in the system of labyrinthine mines beneath Sinnoh. Day after day, she descends with you and her other pokémon in tow, down to the dark, empty tunnels in search of something she never describes to you. It's quiet down there, almost lonely, but Lupe is good at finding treasure. She lets you hold some now and then. Round, smooth, glowing orbs that shed rainbows on the rock walls. Rough, heavy fossils of pokémon so ancient you don't know their names. Brittle revives, even. Your favorites are the evolution stones, the way they feel electrified in your hands, like you're holding storms in tiny bottles. You marvel at their power and envy the pokémon who can draw that energy into themselves.

You wonder, sometimes, if you had remained a kirlia, would this Lupe have let you use the dawn stone to become a gallade? Would that have made this one talk to you? Would it have made the first one keep you?

Those questions burn the hottest in your mind on the nights when you feel emotion seeping through Lupe's cold shell. Those nights, you worry for her because all you can feel is anger and sadness, and it makes you feel afraid.

"She's going through a tough time," her empoleon tells you one night beneath Snowpoint. "Just before you came, she had a fight with her rival. It was pretty bad. He spread some nasty rumors about her. We all thought she would be okay, especially because she was so excited about meeting you, but ..."

The empoleon, Marla, trails off. You stare at her for a long while, waiting for an ending, for a happy note. But there isn't one, and your stomach hurts when you realize this.

"She's alone here. Besides us, of course," Marla tells you. "But I'm afraid we're not enough. Sinnoh has too many unhappy memories for her. We fear that she may move on to Johto." She turns an eye on you, and although her words are bitter, her aura is blue, lonely, and cold. "You're lucky, though. You'll always be with her. She loves you, you know. So please. Make her happy."

You don't need to be told this. You don't, but it makes you look at your trainer anyway. Lupe mines, picking at the wall to pry a fossil free. Another one. Another rock she tosses into her pack before she starts again. You've often wondered why she comes down here, into the cold, empty mines, to to dig for rocks. You realize then that you won't get much of an answer from her.

So you glide up behind her silently and wrap your slender arms around her bony frame. You hold her as tightly as you can, but she doesn't get any warmer. She only freezes, and she feels too much like cold, hard rock for you to tolerate.

You decide that, more than anything, you hate Sinnoh.

* * *

True to Marla's word, you—and only you—are traded to another Lupe for another weedle. You don't try to mention how stupid this is. On the positive side, this Lupe is warmer than the other one, and Johto in general is warmer and more boisterous than Sinnoh. But more than that, you can't help but feel attracted to this Lupe's energy. Her voice booms over others'. Her laugh is louder and longer. Her words blend into a mess of rapid syllables. It is as if she was never sad and never cold. As far as you can tell, she loves it in Johto, and when she is in love, you are in love. For the first time in a long time, you feel yourself falling for a trainer again.

She takes you to Kanto and makes grand plans.

"There's a trainer on Mt. Silver named Red. His pokémon are powerful, and I have to beat him," she explains. "If we want to have any hope of knocking him down, we'll need to train. But we're almost there! You're, what, level seventy-six? A couple more fights, and I can see you sweeping Red!"

And you believe her. Gods help you, you believe her. You can't help it, with how much sincerity is in her voice. How much hope. And she sounds so confident when she commands you. It almost reminds you of the first Lupe—that warmth, that firmness, that energy.

You love her. You can't help it. You love her as she leads you into defeating the gym leaders one by one in a cramped dojo in Saffron. You believe her as she catches new teammates and calls together the gym leaders over and over again for you to defeat. You believe her even after she refuses to set foot on Mt. Silver after she does this for the hundredth time.

It is only after it goes quiet again when you realize that the energy in her voice was hiding the grating twinge of fear.

* * *

You awaken again in sunlight and grass—but not for long. The ball comes quicker this time and hits your shoulder harder, as if it was shot, not thrown.

When you're released next, you find yourself in a crowded, loud city. The noise, the mixture of car engines and hundreds of voices all around you, hurts your ears, and you can barely hear the softness of your new trainer's voice above the din.

She hands you something to eat: a Casteliacone, according to her. This Lupe looks haggard, with bags beneath her eyes and sluggish movements, when she meets your gaze at all. But these glances are rare, yet because you remember the cold of another Lupe, you don't give much thought to the distance this one is placing between you and her. So as you follow her, you eat, licking the cold, sweet cream into your small, bitter mouth.

"I'm sorry," you think she says.

She mumbles those syllables over and over until you reach the outskirts of town. And then, when you can hear her voice clearly, when the two of you stand at the exact middle of the bridge between the city and the forest, she looks up.

"It's pretty out here, isn't it?" she asks.

Your eyes drift skyward, towards the arches that almost touch the star-filled sky. You lap another tongue's worth of sweet cream into your mouth.

"I've always liked this part," she says. "It's the only place in Unova I still like."

You lap up another cold mouthful. You begin to taste something sour on the back of your tongue, especially when she turns to you with those sad, blue eyes.

"I'm sorry, Bill," she says. "I only brought you here to send you to Kalos."

The cone tastes disgusting when you realize what it's for, but you appreciate her honesty this time.

* * *

The lights of Lumiose City hurt your eyes. The noise assaults your ears, and the smell turns your stomach. You don't remember how you got here, but you already want to leave. You cry out, holding your head in both hands as you flinch and turn.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" a voice cries out in a panic.

Things go dark for a while, but when light enters your world again, the sound has died down. You open your eyes slowly, and you find yourself kneeling in a field of purple flowers beneath a fire-red sunset. The air feels warm against your skin, and it carries with it a light, earthy perfume. You blink and turn your head, but before you can see her, before you look at your new trainer, something presses against your lips.

"Here," she says softly. "Eat this. It'll help."

Although you consider protesting, your lips part, and something round and smooth slips into your mouth. Your teeth bite into its soft flesh, and the oran berry explodes into a mouthful of sweet and sour juice. The last of your headache dissipates then as if by magic.

And now, you look down and see white—the brilliant, vibrant white of a smile. Your Lupe.

But she isn't your Lupe. Yes, her smile is white, and her clothes are red, but her brown hair is too short. And her eyes? Brown. An earthy brown. But she has the motherly expression of the Kanto Lupe. She looks tired like the Unova Lupe yet wise, as if she hurt like the Sinnoh Lupe and tried so hard to be happy like the Johto Lupe. And here she is now, a composite, a confusion. You stare at her, scared, until she raises a gentle a hand and places it on your cheek.

"Hi, Bill," she says. "I've waited so long for you."

You continue to stare at her, still uncertain. She looks down and uses her other hand to dig through her bag.

"I'm sorry," she tells you. "Things haven't gotten better. But I'm trying. I really am. And … I know you've traveled a long way, but I swear, you're resting here for a while." She pulls out a pink and green sphere and passes it to you. "Things are going to be different. I promise."

You hold the jewel in your hands, gazing down at it in mild interest. At first, it just feels like an ordinary marble, but the longer you hold it, the more you start to feel something: electricity, power, heat. Your eyes widen in realization, and you look up at your trainer. She smiles broadly.

"I kept that just for you. It's called Gardevoirite, and it'll help you unlock a new form. Kinda like evolution," she explains. "I thought you'd like to carry it, anyway. You loved evolution stones back in Sinnoh, didn't you?"

You stop. The words she used hang on your ears. In Sinnoh?

She tilts her head and continues to grin, as if she can read your thoughts. "Sorry, Bill. There's not much left in Kalos to do. It's like how I had to stop in Hoenn because we just ran out of trainers to beat. But here, I'll be focused on you because we're going to fight trainers all over the world. I'm going to finish what I started in Johto, boy. I'm raising you to level 100. You and these guys."

Your trainer steps aside then, and you see them: five other pokémon. Umbreon. Sableye. Nidorina. Clefable. Cradily. All of them look at you intently, as if they had been waiting for years to see you.

"This is your team," Lupe tells you when you look at her quizzically. "Bill, meet Lanette, Bebe, Amanita, Cassius, and Celio." She blushes, and you can feel embarrassment ebb from her. "Yeah, I know. But I wanted them to match you. You know. Because I caught them specifically for you."

You simply stare at her for a long time. You search her face, looking for an answer to a question you don't quite know how to put together. And the longer you stare at her, the sadder she looks and the more her smile fades, until she finally slips her hand to her hat and tips it just enough to hide her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I know this all looks like a bribe to get you to like me more, but I swear, I'm trying to be better. And … I know I haven't always been the best trainer, and I haven't always explained things well to you. But every trainer you've been with was me, and every trainer you and the others will go to from here on out will be me. It's because I love you, Bill. Crazy, I know, but I do, and I've loved you since I hatched you. You were always there for me, and I'm sorry I didn't always show it. But whenever you beat those trainers back in those other regions? I was always proud of you. And now I'm going to finish what I've started. you're going to be the best gardevoir ever. I promise. That's what you wanted in Johto, right? I swear. This time … this time, it's going to happen."

You hesitate. You look at her and see all the things she isn't saying, all the things she didn't want to tell you from Sinnoh onward, all the things you couldn't protect her from, and all the times she protected you by taking you with her to new region. By keeping you and you alone close.

Suddenly, you feel like you've failed her. Your stomach drops when you think of how much she's tried to keep you, to ensure that one day, the two of you would be happy. And you, meanwhile, couldn't see it. But now you see her, the brilliant blue aura, your Lupe, and you don't know what to do.

Her head tips, and you can no longer see her face beneath her felt hat.

"Oh wow. I'm sorry. That sounded really creepy and turned into something pretty sappy and terrible. You don't … you don't have to believe me," she says, and her voice sounds like she's choking on her words.

So you sweep her into your arms, careful not to jab her with your horn. And you hold her as tightly as you can, as tightly as you can remember her holding you as a ralts, until she holds you back.

Over the months that follow, while she leads you and your team against first the Elite Four and then the last remaining trainers in Kalos, she makes good on her word. You reach heights you had never attained in cold Sinnoh, in warm Johto, or anywhere else.

But you no longer care.

All you care about is going wherever your trainer, your Lupe, goes. No matter where she is, no matter what she looks like, sounds like, or smells like, you will follow your Lupe to the ends of the earth; you will follow her through a thousand regions with a thousand different girls with her soul. Because deep down, you know your Lupe loves you.

And no matter who she is, you love her too.


End file.
